European Union News

According to a report presented at the Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, more than 80% of all orange juice consumed in Europe comes from Brazil and the USA. This report is aimed to improve production standards and help consumers make healthier choices on fruit juices.

EU Commissioner Andris Piebalgs announced the European Commission's pledge of around €110 million to ensure that the Chernobyl site is made stable and environmentally safe. The announcement has made on Tuesday 19th April, when 25 years after the tragic Chernobyl accident. The Commission has so far committed  €470 million to Chernobyl-related projects, mainly for nuclear safety, but also on programmes to help the local population and provide affected families with access to quality healthcare.

The European Commission adopted technical rules on how the 900 and 1800 MHz radio frequency bands should be opened up to advanced 4th generation (4G) communication devices. The rules are an important step to bringing wireless broadband access to more EU citizens and businesses and to avoid interference problems with existing GSM and 3G devices.

The European Commission has set up a questionnaire regarding the broadband issues, such as the development of very high speed broadband technologies or how best to design the access conditions on subsidized next generation networks and has invited stakeholders to give their views on the forthcoming revision of EU rules on the public financing of broadband infrastructure.

The report adopted on Net neutrality stresses the need to ensure that citizens and businesses are easily able to access an open and neutral Internet.

The European Commission has adopted the 17th update of the list of airlines banned in the European Union. There are four all-cargo air carriers from Indonesia and one air carrier from Ukraine which have been removed from the list as safety concerns have been satisfactorily addressed. However, all air carriers certified in Mozambique have been banned from flying into the EU as have the operations of Air Madagascar for two specific aircraft because of significant safety deficiencies requiring decisive action in both cases.

European Commission's annual progress report on education and training reveals that EU countries have improved their education systems in key areas over the past decade but they have achieved only one out of five benchmarks set for 2010.

EU-funded study shows that drugs originally designed to inhibit the growth of cancer cells can also kill the parasite that causes malaria. The idea is to make the host cell environment useless to it, by blocking the kinases in the cell. This strategy deprives the parasite of a major 'modus operandi' for development of drug resistance.

77% of 13-16 year olds and 38% of 9-12 year olds in the EU have a profile on a social networking site, according to a pan-European survey carried out for the European Commission. Moreover, a quarter of children who use social networking sites like Facebook or Hyves have a profile set as "public" which means that everyone can see it. According to the survey, 70% of the childrens in The Netherlands has a profile in a social network against to 25% in France.

The Communication 'Towards robust quality management for European Statistics' adopted by the European Commission proposes to reinforce the quality of European statistics by moving from correction to prevention. This objective is of a crucial importance in strengthening economic governance for the euro area and the EU as a whole.

The European Commission adopted an evaluation report of the Data Retention Directive which established data retention as a response to urgent security challenges, following major terrorist attacks in Madrid in 2004 and in London in 2005. In concrete, it evaluates how Member States have transposed the Directive and assesses the use of retained data and the impact on operators and consumers.

The 2010 Anual Activity Report provides an overview of the key results and achievements of the European Court of Auditors (ECA). Among this results a key indication of impact: 90% of audit recommendations have been accepted by the auditees.